


Z~ 



63d Congress ) 
2d Session f 



SENATE 



/ Document 
\ No. 371 



HIGHER NATIONALITY 



A STUDY IN LAW AND ETHICS 



ANNUAL ADDRESS 

BEFORE THE 

AMERICAN BAR ASSOCIATION AT MONTREAL, CANADA 
ON SEPTEMBER 1, 1913 



By 



RIGHT HON. RICHARD BURDON HALDANE 

LORD HIGH CHANCELLOR OF GREAT BRITAIN 






PRESENTED BY MR. ROOT 
JANUARY 20, 1914. — Ordered to be printed 



WASHINGTON 
1914 



JC3II 

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D. OF 0. 

JAM 28 '914 






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HIGHER NATIONALITY 



A STUDY IN LAW AND ETHICS. 



[Annual address by Right Hon. Richard Burdon Haldane, Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain. (With 
introduction by the Chief Justice of the United States, resolutions of appreciation, etc.) American Bar 
Association, Montreal, Canada, Sept. 1, 1913.] 

(Hon. Edward Douglas White, Chief Justice of the United States, 
presided at this session and introduced the Lord High Chancellor 
of Great Britain as follows:) 

Before endeavoring to perform the duty committed to me at the 
request of your chairman, who has just called upon me to preside 
temporarily, I will read the following telegram: 

The Duke and Duchess of Connaught acknowledge the receipt of the invitation 
to be present at the meeting of the American Bar Association and regret that absence 
in England prevents them from accepting. 

The truth of the thought of the Roman that he who changes skies, 
although he may change countries, does not change heart is quite 
manifest by my own feelings, for, although I have changed countries, 
I am entirely unconscious of any change of heart, because so much 
kindness has been shown me as to cause me to feel as if I continued 
to be at home. 

But, apart from the mere personal sense of home feeling, there 
is a broader ground which naturally tends to cause an American 
lawyer to feel at home in Canada, living as its people do under a 
system of constitutional government. 

Epitomizing the result of the experience of Rome, and illumined 
by the teachings of Christianity, the institutes define justice or law 
as the giving to everyone that which is his due, and jurisprudence 
as the knowledge of all things human and divine, the power to dis- 
tinguish between right and wrong. When analyzed, these concep- 
tions give the clearest apprehension of the rudimentary truths un- 
derlying all constitutional systems of government and demonstrate 
that mere questions of municipal law are of minor importance when 
compared with the fundamental considerations which are at the basis 
of the preservation of free institutions; that is, the conservatism 
which is necessary to conserve representative government, the will- 
ingness of one to submit to such restraints upon his own conduct as 
are essential to the preservation of the rights of all. In other words, 
the powder of a free people to restrain themselves in order that free- 
dom may endure. 

This thought at once rlso makes clear what otherwise might be 
obscure; that is, the meeting of the American Bar Association in a 
country over which floats a flag different from that to which its own 
allegiance is due. It also explains, putting aside questions of per- 
sonal kindness and courtesy, why the Lord High Chancellor, the in- 
cumbent of the greatest — pardon me, of one of the greatest — tribunals 

3 



4 HIGHER NATIONALITY. 

on the earth, has crossed the seas at the invitation of the association 
to grace this assembly by his presence. 

And the mere mention of the presence of his lordship serves to 
show what an impossible task has been imposed upon me, since that 
task is to introduce the Lord Chancellor to this meeting, The im- 
possibility is well illustrated by a simple incident which comes to my 
mind. I recollect a few years ago I was with a gentleman who had 
with him his little son, who was fishing. The sun was hot, and after 
throwing out his line, the boy was soon tired, and desiring to go away, 
leaving his line, said, "Papa, that line fisses itself." So how can it 
be within my power as en American lawyer to introduce his lordship 
to American lawyers when the very mention of his presence at once 
serves to make him known ? 

I might avoid doing the unnecessary or impossible by introducing 
my countrymen to his lordship, but I could not do that without vio- 
lating the rule stated by the Prime Minister in his eloquent address 
this morning, when he declared that it was impossible to speak of the 
warm welcome which the Canadians extended to the association be- 
cause the warmth of that welcome was what the lawyers speak of as 
res ipsa loquitur; that is, a thing apparent to everybody and speak- 
ing for itself. Applying this rule, how can it be within my power to 
introduce to his lordship the members of the association since in 
speaking to them he is to look into their faces, and in doing so can not 
fail to read the expression of the veneration which they entertain 
for the high office which he fills, of the respect with which they regard 
him personally, and of their grateful appreciation of his kindness in 
coming across the seas to honor them with his presence and to give 
them the benefit of his wisdom ? 

But my desire to discharge the very agreeable duty which rests 
upon me is so great that I shall venture to do that which is super- 
fluous by saying to his lordship that nowhere in the English-speaking 
world would he find an audience where more respect is felt for the 
principles of that great system of law of which the chancery court of 
England constitutes so great a part, and nowhere would he find 
a warmer and more generous sympathy than goes out to him in this 
audience to-day. 

My lord, may I be permitted to introduce to you my brethren of 
the American Bar Association ? 

The Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain. I ask you first 
of all to let me express my personal gratitude to my colleague (for 
he has invited me to call him such), the Chief Justice of the United 
States, not only for coming here to welcome me, but for the kindly 
words which he has spoken. 

Then I wish to thank the members of the association for the 
splendid reception they have given me and the care they have 
taken of me. Of the association and its work, I shall have some- 
thing more to say later on. 

And finally, but not least, I wish to express my personal grati- 
tude to my colleagues as ministers of the Crown, the Prime Minister 
of Canada and the Minister of Justice, for the warmth of their welcome 
to all of us who belong to the other two nations here in Montreal 
to-dav. 



HIGHER NATIONALITY. 5 

It is with genuine pleasure that I find myself among my fellow 
lawyers of the New World. But my satisfaction is tempered by a 
sense of embarrassment. There is a multitude of topics on which it 
would be most natural that I should seek to touch. If, however, I 
am to use to any purpose the opportunity which you have accorded 
me, I must exclude all but one or two of them. For in an hour like 
this, as in most other times of endeavor, he who vould accomplish 
anything must limit himself. What I have to say will therefore be 
confined to the suggestion of little more than a single thought, and 
to its development and illustration with materials that lie to hand. 
I wish to lay before you a result at which I have arrived after reflec- 
tion, and to submit it for your consideration with such capacity as I 
possess. 

For the occasion is as rare as it is important. Around me I see 
assembled some of the most distinguished figures in the public life 
of this continent; men who throughout their careers have combined 
law with statesmanship, and who have exercised a potent influence 
in the fashioning or opinion and of policy. The law is indeed a 
calling notable for the individualities it has produced. Their pro- 
duction has counted for much in the past of the three nations that 
are represented at this meeting, and it means much for them to-day. 

What one who finds himself face to face with this assemblage 
naturally thinks of is the future of these three nations; a future that 
may depend largely on the influence of men with opportunities such as 
are ours. The United States and Canada and Great Britain together 
form a group which is unique; unique because of its common in- 
heritance in traditions, in surroundings, and in ideals. And nowhere 
is the character of this common inheritance more apparent than in 
the region of jurisprudence. The lawyers of the three countries 
think for the most part alike. At no period has political divergence 
prevented this fact from being strikingly apparent. Where the letter 
of their law is different the spirit is yet the same, and it has been so 
always. As I speak of the historical tradition of our great calling, and 
of what appears likely to be its record in days to come, it seems to me 
that we who are here gathered may well proclaim, in the words of the 
Spartans, " We are what you were: we shall be what you are." 

It is this identity of spirit, largely due to a past which the lawyers 
of the group have inherited jointly, that not only forms a bond of 
union, but furnishes them with an influence that can hardly be 
reproduced in other nations. I take my stand on facts which are 
beyond controversy, and seek to look ahead. I ask } t ou to consider 
with me whether we, who have in days gone by molded their laws, 
are not called on to try in days that lie in front to mold opinion in yet 
another form, and so encourage the nations of this group to develop 
and recognize a reliable character in the obligations they assume 
toward each other. For it may be that there are relations possible 
within such a group of nations as is ours that arc not possible for 
nations more isolated from each other and lacking in our identity of 
history and spirit. Canada and Great Britain on the one hand and 
the United States on the other, with their common language, their 
common interests, and their common ends, form something resembling 
a single society. If there be such a society it may develop within itself 
a foundation for international faith of a kind that is new in the 



6 HIGHER NATIONALITY. 

history of the world. Without interfering with the freedom of action 
of these great countries, or the independence of their constitutions, 
it may be possible to establish a true unison between sovereign States. 
This unison will doubtless, if it ever comes into complete being, have 
its witnesses in treaties and written agreements. But such documents 
can never of themselves constitute it. Its substance, if. it is to be 
realized, must be sought for deeper down in an intimate social life. 
I have never been without hope that the future development of the 
world may bring all the nations that compose it nearer together, so 
that they will progressively cease to desire to hold each other at 
arm's length, But such an approximation can only come about very 
gradually, if I read the signs of the times aright. It seems to me to be 
far less likely of definite realization than in the case of a group united 
by ties such as those of which I have spoken. 

Well, the growth of such a future is at least conceivable. The 
substance of some of the things I am going to say about its concep- 
tion, and about the way by which that conception may become real, 
is as old as Plato. Yet the principles and facts to which I shall have 
to refer appear to me to be often overlooked by those to whom they 
might well appear obvious. Perhaps the reason is the deadening 
effect of that conventional atmosphere out of which few men in pub- 
lic life succeed in completely escaping. We can best assist in the 
freshening of that atmosphere by omitting no opportunity of trying 
to think rightly, and thereby to contribute to the fashioning of a 
more hopeful and resolute kind of public opinion. For, as some one 
has said, "L* opinion generale dirige Tautorite, quels qu'en soient les 
deposit oires." 

The chance of laying before such an audience as this what was in 
my mind made the invitation which came from the bar association 
and from the heads of our great profession, both in Canada, and in the 
United States, a highly attractive one. But before I could accept it 
I had to obtain the permission of my sovereign; for, as you know, 
the lord chancellor is also custos sigilli, the keeper of that great- 
seal under which alone supreme executive acts of the British Crown 
can be done. It is an instrument he must neither quit without 
special authority nor carry out of the realm. The head of a prede- 
cessor of mine, Cardinal W r oisey, was in peril because he was so daring 
as to take the great seal across the water to Calais, when he ought 
instead to have asked his sovereign to put it into commission. 

Well, the clavis regni was on the present occasion put safely into 
commission before I left, and I am privileged to be here with a com- 
fortable constitutional conscience. But the King has done more than 
graciously approve of my leaving British shores. I am the bearer 
to you of a message from him which I will now read: 

I have given my lord chancellor permission to cross the seas, so that he may address 
the meeting at Montreal. I have asked him to convey from me to that great meeting 
of the lawyers of the United States and of Canada my best wishes for its success. I 
entertain the hope that the deliberations of the distinguished men of both countries 
who are to assemble at Montreal may add yet further to the esteem and good will 
which the people of the United States and of Canada and the United Kingdom have 
for each other. 

The King's message forms a text for what I have to say, and, 
having conveyed that message to you, I propose in the first place 
to turn to the reasons which make me think that the class to which 



HIGHER NATIONALITY. 7 

you and I belong has a peculiar and extensive responsibility as re- 
gards the future relations of the three countries. But these reasons 
turn on the position which courts of law hold in Anglo-Saxon consti- 
tutions, and before I enter on them I must recall to you the character 
of the tradition that tends to fashion a common mind in you and me 
as members of a profession that has exercised a profound influence 
on Anglo-Saxon society. It is not difficult in an assemblage of law- 
yers such as we are to realize the process by which our customary 
habits of thought have come into being and bind us together. The 
spirit of the jurisprudence which is ours, of the system which we apply 
to the regulation of human affairs in Canada, in the United States, 
and in Great Britain alike, is different from that which obtains in 
other countries. It is its very peculiarity that lends to it its potency, 
and it is worth while to make explicit what the spirit of our law really 
means for us. 

I read the other day the reflections of a foreign thinker on- what 
seemed to him the barbarism of the entire system of English juris- 
prudence, in its essence judge-made and not based on the scientific 
foundation of a code. I do not wonder at such reflections. There 
is a gulf fixed between the method of a code and such procedure as 
that of Chief Justice Holt in Coggs v. Bernard, of Chief Justice Pratt 
in Armory v. Delmairie, and of Lord Mansfield when he defined the 
count for money had and received. A stranger to the spirit of the 
law as it was evolved through centuries in England will always find 
its history a curious one. Looking first at the early English com- 
mon law, its most striking feature is the enormous extent to which 
its founders concerned themselves with remedies before settling the 
substantive rules for breach of which the remedies were required. 
Nowhere else, unless perhaps in the law of ancient Rome, do we see 
such a spectacle of legal writs making legal rights. Of the system 
of the common law there is a saying of Mr. Justice Wendell Holmes 
which is profoundly true : 

The life of the law has not been logic; it has been experience. The felt necessities 
of the time, the prevalent moral and political theories, intentions of public policy, 
avowed or unconscious, even the prejudices which judges share with their fellow 
men, have had a good deal more to do than the syllogism in determining the rules 
by which men should be governed. The law embodies the story of a nation's devel- 
opment, through manv centuries, and it can not be dealt with as if it contained only 
the axioms and corollaries of a book of mathematics. 

As the distinguished writer whom I have quoted tells us, we can 
not, without the closest application of the historical method, com- 
prehend the genesis and evolution of the English common law. Its 
paradox is that in its beginnings the forms of action came before the 
substance. It is in the history of English remedies that we have to 
study the growth of rights. I recall a notable sentence in one of Sir 
Henry Maine's books. "So great," he declares, "is the ascendency 
of the law of actions in the infancy of courts of justice, that substan- 
tive law has at first the look of being gradually secreted in the inter- 
stices of procedure." I will add to his observation this: That all our 
reforms notwithstanding, the dead hands of the old forms of action 
still rest firmly upon us. In logic the substantive conceptions ought, 
of course, to have preceded these forms. But the historical sequence 
has been different, for reasons with which every competent student 
of early English history is familiar. The phenomenon is no uncom- 
mon one. The time spirit and the spirit of logical form do not always, 



8 HIGHER NATIONALITY. 

in a world where the contingent is ever obtruding itself, travel hand 
in hand. The germs of substantive law were indeed present as 
potential forces from the beginning, but they did not grow into life 
until later on. And therefore forms of action have thrust themselves 
forward with undue prominence. That is why the understanding of 
our law is, even for the practitioner of to-day, inseparable from 
knowledge of its history. 

As with the common law, so it is with equity. To know the prin- 
ciples of equity is to know the history of the courts in which it has 
been administered, and especially the history of the office which at 
present I chance myself to hold. Between law and equity there is 
no other true line of demarcation. The King was the fountain of 
justice. But to get justice at his hands it was necessary first of all 
to obtain the King's writ. As Bracton declared, a non potest quis 
sine brevi agere." But the King could not personally look after the 
department where such writs were to be obtained. At the head of 
this, his chancery, he therefore placed a chancellor, usually a bishop, 
but sometimes an archbishop, and even a cardinal, for in those days 
the church had a grip which to a lord chancellor of the twentieth cen- 
tury is unfamiliar. At first the holder of the office was not a judge. 
But he was keeper of the King's conscience, and his business was to 
see that the King's subjects had remedies when he considered that 
they had suffered wrongs. Consequently be began to invent new 
writs, and finally to develop remedies which were not confined by the 
rigid precedents of the common law. Thus he soon became a judge, 
When he found that he could not grant a common-law writ he took 
to summoning people before him and to searching their consciences. 
He inquired, for instance, as to trusts which they were said to have 
undertaken, and as the result of his inquiries rights and obligations 
unknown to the common law were born in his court of conscience. 
You see at a glance how susceptible such a practice was of develop- 
ment into a complete system of equity. You would expect, more- 
over, to find that the ecclesiastical atmosphere in which my official 
predecessors lived would influence the forms in which they molded 
their special system of jurisprudence. This did indeed happen, but 
even in those days the atmosphere was not merely ecclesiastical. For 
the lord hig-h chancellor in the household of an early English monarch 
was the King's domestic chaplain, and as, unlike his fellow servants 
in the household, the lord high steward and the lord great chamber- 
lain, he always possessed the by no means common advantage of being 
able to read and write, he acted as the King's political secretary. He 
used, it seems, in early days to live in the palace, and he had a regular 
daily allowance. From one of the records it appears that his wages 
were five shillings, a simnel cake, two seasoned simnels, one sextary of 
clear wine, one sextary of household wine, one large wax candle, and 
40 small pieces of candle. In the time of Henry II the modern treas- 
ury spirit appears to have begun to walk abroad, for in the records the 
allowance of five shillings appears as if subjected to a reduction. If 
he dined away from the palace, si extra domum comederit, and was 
thereby forced to provide extras, then indeed he got his five shillings. 
But if he dined at home, intra domum, he was not allowed more than 
three shillings and sixpence. The advantage of his position was, how- 
ever, that, living in the palace, he was always at the King's ear. He 



HIGHER NATIONALITY. 9 

kept the great seal through which all great acts of state were mani- 
fested. Indeed, it was the custody of the great seal that made him 
chancellor. Even to-day this is the constitutional usage. When I 
myself was made lord chancellor the appointment was effected, not 
by letters patent, nor by writing under the sign manual, nor even by 
words spoken, but by the Sovereign making a simple delivery of the 
great seal into my hands while I knelt before him at Buckingham 
Palace in the presence of the privy council. 

The reign of Charles I saw the last of the ecclesiastical chancellors. 
The slight sketch of the earlier period which I have drawn shows that 
in these times there might well have developed a great divergence of 
equity from the common law, under the influence of the canon and 
Roman laws to which ecclesiastical chancellors would naturally turn. 
In the old courts of equity it was natural that a different atmosphere 
from that of the common-law courts should be breathed. But with 
the gradual drawing together of the courts of law and equity under 
law chancellors the difference of atmosphere disappears, and we see 
the two systems becoming fused into one. 

The moral of the whole story is the hopelessness of attempting to 
study Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence apart from the history of its growth 
and of the characters of the judges who created it. It is by no acci- 
dent that among Anglo-Saxon lawyers the law does not assume the 
form of codes, but is largely judge-made. We have statutory codes 
for portions of the field which we have to cover. But these statutory 
codes come, not at the beginning, but at the end. For the most part 
the law has already been made by those who practice it before the 
codes embody it. Such codes with us arrive only with the close of 
the day, after its heat and burden have been borne and when the 
journey is already near its end. 

I have spoken of a spirit and of traditions which have been apparent 
in English law. But they have made their influence felt elsewhere. 
My judicial colleagues in the Province of Quebec administer a system 
which is partly embodied in a great modern code, and partly depends 
on old French law of the period of Louis XIY. They apply, more- 
over, a good deal of the public and commercial law of England. The 
relation of the code to these systems has given rise to some contro- 
versies. What I have gathered, however, when sitting in the judicial 
committee of the privy council, is that a spirit not very different 
from that of the English lawyers has prevailed in Quebec. The in- 
fluence of the judges in molding the law and of legal opinion in 
fashioning the shape which it should take seem to me to have been 
hardly less apparent in Quebec than elsewhere in Canada. Indeed, 
the several systems of our group of nations, however these systems 
have originated, everywhere show a similar spirit, and disclose the 
power of our lawyers in creating and developing the law as well as in 
changing it; a power which has been more exercised outside the 
legislature than within it. It is surely because the lawyers of the 
New World have an influence so potent and so easily wielded that 
they have been able to use it copiously in a wider field of public affairs 
than that of mere jurisprudence. It is very striking (o the observer 
to see how many of the names of those who have controlled the cur- 
rents of public opinion in the United States and Canada alike have 
been the names of famous lawyers. I think this has been so partly 
because the tradition and spirit of the law were always what I have 



10 HIGHER NATIONALITY. 

described and different from that on the Continent of Europe. But 
it has also been so because, in consequence of that tradition and 
spirit, the vocation of the lawyer has not, as on the Continent of 
Europe, been that of a segregated profession of interpreters, but a 
vocation which has placed him at the very heart of affairs. In the 
United Kingdom this has happened in the same fashion, yet hardly to 
so great an extent, because there has been competition of other and 
powerful classes whose tradition has been to devote their lives to a 
parliamentary career. But in the case of all three nations it is pro- 
foundly true that, as was said by the present President of the United 
States in 1910, in an address delivered to this very association, "the 
country must find lawyers of the right sort and the old spirit to advise 
it, or it must stumble through a very chaos of blind experiment. It 
never," he went on to add, "needed lawyers who are also statesmen 
more than it needs them now; needs them in its courts, in its legisla- 
tures, in its seats of executive authority; lawyers who can think in 
the terms of society itself." 

This at least is evident that if you and I belong to a great calling it 
is a calling in which we have a great responsibility. We can do much 
to influence opinion, and the history of our law and the character of 
our tradition render it easy for us to attain to that unity in habit of 
thought and sentiment which is the first condition of combined action. 
That is why I do not hesitate to speak to you as I am doing. 

And having said so much, I now submit to you my second point. 
The law has grown by development through the influence of the 
opinion of society guided by its skilled advisers. But the law forms 
only a small part of the system of rules by which the conduct of the 
citizens of a State is regulated. Law, properly so called, whether 
civil or criminal, means essentially those rules of conduct which are 
expressly and publicly laid down by the sovereign will of the State 
and are enforced by the sanction of compulsion. Law, however, im- 
ports something more than this. As I have already remarked, its 
full significance can not be understood apart from the history and 
spirit of the nation whose law it is. Moreover, it has a real relation 
to the obligations even of conscience, as well as to something else 
which I shall presently refer to as the general will of society. In 
short, if its full significance is to be appreciated, larger conceptions 
than those of the mere lawyer are essential; conceptions which come 
to us from the moralist and the sociologist, and without which we can 
not see fully how the g3iiesis of law has come about. That is where 
writers like Bentham and Austin are deficient. One can not read a 
great book like the "Esprit des Lois" without seeing that Montes- 
quieu had a deeper insight than Bentham or Austin, and that he had 
already grasped a truth which, in Great Britain at all events, was to 
be forgotten for a time. 

Besides the rules and sanctions which belong to law and legality 
there are other rules with a different kind of sanction which also 
influence conduct. I have spoken of conscience, and conscience, in 
the strict sense of the word, has its own court. But the tribunal of 
conscience is a private one and its jurisdiction is limited to the indi- 
vidual whose conscience it is. The moral rules enjoined by the pri- 
vate conscience may be the very highest of all. But they are en- 
forced only by an inward and private tribunal. Their sanction is 
subjective and not binding in the same way on all men. The very 



HIGHEK NATIONALITY. 11 

loftiness of the motive which makes a man love his neighbor more 
than himself, or se]l all his goods in order that he may obey a great 
and inward call, renders that motive in the highest cases incapable 
of b3ing made a rule of universal application in any positive form. 
And so it was that the foundation on which one of the greatest of 
modern moralists, Immanuel Kant, sought to base his ethical sys- 
tem had to be revised by his successors. For it was found to reduce 
itself to little more than a negative and therefore barren obligation 
to act at all times from maxims fit for law universal; maxims which, 
because merely negative, turned out to be inadequate as guides 
through the field of daily conduct. In point of fact, that field is 
covered in the case of the citizen only to a small extent by law and 
legality on the one hand, and by the dictates of the individual con- 
science on the other. There is a more extensive system of guidance 
which regulates conduct and which differs from both in its character 
and sanction. It applies, like law, to all the members of a society 
alike without distinction of persons. It resembles the morality of 
conscience in that it is enforced by no legal compulsion. In the 
English language we have no name for it, and this is unfortunate, 
for the lack of a distinctive name has occasioned confusion both of 
thought and of expression. German writers have, however, marked 
out the system to which I refer and have given it the name of "Sitt- 
lichkeit." In his book "Der Zweck im Recht" Rudolph von Jher- 
ing, a famous professor at Gottingen, with whose figure I was 
familiar when I was a student there nearly 40 years ago, pointed cut, 
in the part which he devoted to the subject of "Sittlichkeit/' that it 
was the merit of the German language to have been the only one to 
find a really distinctive and scientific expression for it. "Sitthch- 
fceit" is the system of habitual or customary conduct, ethical rather 
than legal, which embraces all those obligations of the citizen which 
it is "bad form" or "not the thing 7 ' to disregard. Indeed, regard 
for these obligations is frequently enjoined merely by the social 
penalty of being "cut" or looked on askance. And" jet the system 
is so generally acc3pted and is held in so high regard that no one can 
venture to disregard it without in some way suffering at the hands 
of his neighbors for so doing. If a man maltreats his wife and chil- 
dren, or habitually jostles his fellow citizen in the street, or does 
things flagrantly selfish or in bad taste, he is pretty sure to find 
himself in a minority and the worse off in the end. Rut not only 
does it not pay to do these things, but the decent man does not 
wish to do them. A feeling analogous to what arises from the 
dictates of his more private and individual conscience restrains 
him. He finds himself so restrained in the ordinary affairs of daily 
life. But he is guided in his conduct by no mere inward feeling 
as in the case of conscience. Conscience and, for that matter, law 
overlap parts of the sphere of social obligate n about which I am 
spsakmg. A rule of c nduct may, indeed, appear in more than one 
sphere, and may consequently have a twofold sanction. Rut the 
guide to which the citizen mostly looks is just (lie standard recog- 
nized by the community; a community made up mainly of those 
fellow citizens whose good opinion he respects and desires to have. 
He has everywhere round him an object lesson in the conduct of 
decent people toward eapn other and toward the community to 
which they belong. Without such conduct and the restraints which 



12 HIGHER NATIONALITY. 

it imposes there could be no tolerable social life, and real freedom 
from interference would not be enjoyed. It is the instinctive sense of 
what to do and what not to do in daily life and behavior that is the 
source of liberty and ease. And it is this instinctive sense of obli- 
gation that is the chief foundation of society. Its reality takes 
objective shape and displays itself in family life and in our other 
civic and social institutions. It is not limited to any one form, and 
it is capable of manifesting itself in new forms and of developing 
and changing old forms. Indeed, the civic community is more than 
a political fabric. It includes all the social institutions in and by 
which the individual life is influenced, such as are the family, the 
school, the church, the legislature, and the executive. None of these 
can subsist in isolation from the rest; together they and other insti- 
tutions of the kind form a single organic whole; the whole which is 
known as the nation. The spirit and habit of life which this organic 
entirety inspires and compels are what, for my present purpose, I 
mean by "Sittlichksit." "Sitte" is the German for custom, and 
"Sittlichkeit" implies custom and a habit of mind and action. It 
also implies a iittle more. Fichte 1 defines it in words which are 
worth quoting and which I will put into English: 

What, to begin with — 

He says — 

does ' 'Sitte" signify, and in what sense do we use the word? It means for us, and means 
in every accurate reference we make to it, those principles of conduct which regulate 
people in their relations to each other, and which have become matter of habit and 
second nature at the stage of culture reached, and of which therefore we are not 
explicitly conscious. Principles, we call them, because we do not refer to the sort of 
conduct that is casual or is determined on casual grounds, but to the hidden and uni- 
form ground of action which we assume to be present in the man whose action is not 
deflected and from which we can pretty certainly predict what he will do. Principles, 
we say, which have become a second nature and of which we are not explicitly con- 
scious. We thus exclude all impulses and motives based on free individual choice, 
the inward aspect of "Sittlichkeit," that is to say morality and also the outward side, 
or law, alike. For what a man has first to reflect over and then freely to resolve is not 
for him a habit in conduct, and in so far as habit in conduct is associated with a particu- 
lar age it is regarded as the unconscious instrument of the time spirit. 

The system of ethical habit in a community is of a dominating 
character, for the decision and influence of the whole community is 
embodied in that social habit. Because such conduct *is systematic 
and covers the whole of the field of society the individual will is 
closely related by it to the will and spirit of the community. And 
out of this relation arises the power of adequately controlling the con- 
duct of the individual. If this power fails or becomes weak, the 
community degenerates and may fall to pieces. Different nations 
excel in their "Sittlichkeit" in different fashions. The spirit of the 
community and its ideals may vary greatly. There may be a low 
level of "Sittlichkeit/' and we have the spectacle of nations which 
have even degenerated in this respect. It may possibly conflict with 
law and morality, as in the case of the duel. But when its level is 
high in a nation we admire the system, for we see it not only guiding 
a people and binding them together for national effort but affording 
the most real freedom of thought and action for those who in daily 
life habitually act in harmony with the general will. 

i Grundziige dos Gegenwartigan Zeitalters. Werke, Band 7, p. 214. 



HIGHER NATIONALITY. 13 

Thus we have in the case of a community, be it the city or be it the 
state, an illustration of a sanction which is sufficient to compel 
observance of a rule without any question of the application of force. 
This kind of sanction may be of a highly compelling quality, and it 
often extends so far as to make the individual prefer the good of the 
community to his own. The development of many of our social 
institutions, of our hospitals, of our universities, and of other estab- 
lishments of the kind shows the extent to which it reaches and is 
powerful. But it has yet higher forms in which it approaches very 
nearly to the level of the obligation of conscience, although it is 
distinct from that form of obligation. I will try to make clear what 

I mean by illustrations. A man may be impelled to action of a high 
order by his sense of unity with the society to which he belongs; 
action of which, from the civil standpoint, all approve. What he 
does in such a case is natural to him, and is done without thought of 
reward or punishment, but it has reference to standards of conduct 
set up by society and accepted just because society has set them up. 
There is a poem by the late Sir Alfred Lyall which exemplifies the 
high level that may be reached in such conduct. The poem is called 

II Theology in Extremis," and it describes the feelings of an English- 
man who had been taken prisoner by Mahometan rebels in the Indian 
mutiny. He is face to face with a cruel death. They offer him his 
life if he will repeat something from the Koran. If he complies, no one 
is likely ever to hear of it, and he will be free to return to England and 
to the woman he loves. Moreover, and here is the real point, he is 
not a believer in Christianity, so that it is no question of denying his 
Savior. What ought he to do ? Deliverance is easy and the relief 
and advantage would be unspeakably great. But he does not really 
hesitate, and every shadow of doubt disappears when he hears his 
fellow prisoner, a half-caste, pattering eagerly the words demanded. 
He himself has no hope of heaven and he loves life: 

Yet for the honor of English race 

May I not live and endure disgrace. 

Ay, but the word if I could have said it, 

I by no terrors of hell perplext. 

Hard to be silent and have no credit 

From man in this world, or reward in the next, 

None to bear witness and reckon the cost 

Of the name that is saved by the life that is lost. 

I must begone to the crowd untold 

Of men by the cause which they served unknown, 

Who moulder in myriad graves* of old, 

Never a story and never a stone 

Tells of the martyrs who die like me 

Just for the pride of the old countree. 

I will take another example, this time from the literature of ancient 
Greece. 

In one of the shortest but not least impressive of his dialogues, the 
"Crito," Plato tells us of the character of Socrates, not as a philoso- 
pher, but as a good citizen. He has been unjustly condemned by 
the Athenians as an enemy to the good of the State. Crifco comes to 
him in prison to persuade him to escape. He urges on him many 
arguments, his duty to his children included. But Socrates refuses. 
He chooses to follow, not what any one in the crowd might do, but 
the example which the ideal citizen should set. It would be a breach 
of his duty to fly from the judgment duly passed in the Athens to 
which he belongs, even though he thinks the decree should have been 
different. For it is the decree of the established justice of his city 
State. He will not "play truant." He hears the words, "Listen, 



14 HIGHER NATIONALITY. 

Socrates, to us who have brought you up," and in reply he refuses to 

fo away in these final sentences: "This is the voice which I seem to 
ear murmuring in my ears, like the sound of the flute in the ears 
of the mystic; that voice, I say, is murmuring in my ears, and pre- 
vents me hearing any other. And I know that anything more which 
you may say will be vain." 

Why do men of this stamp act so, it may be when leading the bat- 
tle line, it may be at critical moments of quite other kinds ? It is, I 
think, because they are more than mere individuals. Individual 
they are, but completely real, even as individual, only in their rela- 
tion to organic and social wholes in winch they are members, such 
as the family, the city, the State. There is in every truly organized 
community a common will which is willed by those who compose that 
community, and who in so willing are more than isolated men and 
women. It is not, indeed, as unrelated atoms that they have lived. 
They have grown, from the receptive days of childhood up to maturity, 
in an atmosphere of example and general custom and their lives 
have widened out from one little world to other and higher worlds, 
so that, through occupying successive stations in life, they more and 
more come to make their own the life of the social whole in which 
they move and have their being. They can not mark off or define 
their own individualities without reference to the individualities of 
others. And so they unconsciously find themselves as in truth 
pulse-beats of the whole system, and themselves the whole system. 
It is real in them and they in it. They- are real only because they 
are social. The notion that the individual is the highest form of 
reality, and that the relationship of individuals is one of mere con- 
tract, the notion of Hobbes and of Bentham and of Austin, turns 
out to be quite inadequate. Even of an every day contract, that of 
marriage, it has been well said that it is a contract to pass out of 
the sphere of contract, and that it is possible only because the con- 
tracting parties are already beyond and above that sphere. As a 
modern writer, F. H. Bradley, of Oxford, to whose investigations in 
these regions we owe much, has finely said : 

The moral organism is not a mere animal organism. In the latter the member is 
not aware of itself as such, while in the former it knows itself and therefore knows 
the whole in itself. The narrow external function of the man is not the whole man. 
He has a life which we can not see with our eyes, and there is no duty so mean that 
it is not the realization of this, and knowable as such. What counts is not the visi- 
ble outer work so much as the spirit in which it is done. The breadth of my life 
is not measured by the multitude of my pursuits, nor the space I take up amongst 
other men, but by the fullness of the whole life which I know as mine. It is true 
that less now depends on each of us as this or that man; it is not true that our indi- 
viduality is therefore lessened, that therefore we have less in us. 

There is, according to this view, a general will with which the will 
of the good citizen is in accord. He feels that he would despise him- 
self were his private will not in harmony with it. The notion of the 
reality of such a will is no new one. It is as old as the Greeks, for 
whom the moral order and the city state were closely related, and 
we find it in modern books in which we do not look for it. Jean 
Jacques Rousseau is probably best known to the world by the famous 
words in which he begins the first chapter of the Social Contract : 

Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains. Those who think themselves 
to be the masters of others cease not to be greater slaves than the people they govern. 



HIGHER NATIONALITY. 15 

He goes on in the next paragraph to tell us that if he were only to 
consider force and the effects of it, he would say that if a nation was 
constrained to obey and did obey it did well, but that whenever it 
could throw off its yoke and did throw it off it acted better. His 
words, written in 1762, became a text for the pioneers of the French 
Revolution; but they would have done well to read further into the 
book. As Rousseau goes on we find a different conception. He 
passes from considering the fiction of a social contract to a discussion 
of the power over the individual of the general will, by virtue of 
which a people becomes a people. This general will, the volonte 
generale, he distinguishes from the volonte de tous, which is a mere 
numerical sum of individual wills. These particular wills do not rise 
above themselves. The general will, on the other hand, represents 
what is greater than the individual volition of those who compose the 
society of which it is the will. On occasions this higher will is more 
apparent than at other times. But it may, if there is social slackness, 
be difficult to distinguish from a mere aggregate of voices, from the 
will of a mob. What is interesting is that Rousseau, so often asso- 
ciated with doctrine of quite another kind, should finally recognize 
the bond of a general will as what really holds the community together. 
For him, as for those who have had a yet clearer grasp of the princi- 
ple, in willing the general will we not only realize our true selves, but 
we may rise above our ordinary habit of mind. We may reach 
heights which we could not reach, or which at all events most of us 
could not reach, in isolation. There are few observers who have not 
been impressed with the wonderful unity and concentration of pur- 
pose which an entire nation may display — above all in a period of 
crisis. We see it in time of war, when a nation is fighting for its life 
or for a great cause. We have seen it in Japan and we have seen it 
still more recently among the people of the Balkan Peninsula. We 
have marveled at the illustrations with which history abounds of the 
general will rising to heights of which but few of the individual citi- 
zens in whom it is embodied have ever before been conscious even in 
their dreams. 

In his life of Themis tocles Plutarch tells us how even in time of 
peace the leader of the Athenian people could fashion them, into an 
undivided community and inspire them to rise above themselves. It 
was before the Persians had actually threatened to invade Attica that 
Themistocles foresaw what would come. Greece could not raise 
armies comparable in numbers to those of the Persian kings. But 
he told his people that the oracle had spoken thus: 

When all things else are taken within the boundary of Oecrops and the covert of 
divine Cithaeron, Zeus grants to Athena that the wall of wood alone shall remain 
uncaptured, which shall help thee and thy children. 

The Athenian citizens were accustomed in each year to divide 
among themselves the revenue of then' silver mines at Laurium. 
Themistocles had the daring, so Plutarch tells us, to come forward 
and boldly propose that the usual distribution should cease, and tha t 
they should let him spend the money for them in building a hun- 
dred ships. The citizens rose to his lead, the ships wore built, and 
with them the Greeks were able at a later date to win against Xerxes 
the great sea fight at Salamis and to defeat an invasion by the hosts 
of Persia which, had it succeeded, might have changed the course of 
modern as well as ancient historv. 



16 HIGHER NATIONALITY. 

By such leadership it is that a common ideal can be made to pene- 
trate the soul of a people and to take complete possession of it. The 
ideal may be very high, or it may be of so ordinary a kind that we 
are not conscious of it without the effort of reflection. But when it is 
there it influences and guides daily conduct. Such idealism passes be- 
yond the sphere of law, which provides only what is necessary for 
mutual protection and liberty of just action. It falls short, on the 
other hand, in quality of the dictates of what Kant called the cate- 
gorical imperative that rules the private and individual conscience, 
but that alone; an imperative which therefore gives insufficient 
guidance for ordinary and daily social life. Yet the ideal of which I 
speak is not the less binding, and it is recognized as so binding that 
the conduct of all good men conforms to it. 

Thus we find within the single state the evidence of a sanction 
which is less than legal but more than merely moral, and which is 
sufficient in the vast majority of the events of daily life to secure 
observance of general standards of conduct without any question of 
resort to force. If this is so within a nation, can it be so as between 
nations? This brings me at once to my third point. Can nations 
form a group of community among themselves within which a habit 
of looking to common ideals may grow up sufficiently strong to de- 
velop a general will, and to make the binding power of these ideals a 
reliable sanction for their obligations to each other? 

There is, I think, nothing in the real nature of nationality that 
precludes such a possibility. A famous student of history has be- 
queathed to us a definition of nationality which is worth attention. 
I refer to Ernest Renan, of whom George Meredith once said to me, 
while the great French critic was still living, that there was more in 
his head than in any other head in Europe. Renan tells us that: 

Man is enslaved neither by his race, nor by his language, nor by his religion, nor 
by the course of rivers, nor by the direction of mountain ranges. A great aggregation 
of men, sane of mind and warm of heart, creates a moral consciousness which is called 
a nation. 

Another acute critic of life, Matthew Arnold, citing one still greater 
than himself, draws what is, in effect, a deduction from the same 
proposition. 

Let us — 

He says 1 — 
conceive of the whole group of civilized nations as being, for intellectual and spiritual 
purposes, one great confederation, bound to a joint action and working toward a 
common result; a confederation whose members have a due knowledge both of the 
past, out of which they all proceed, and of each other. This was the ideal of Goethe, 
and it is an ideal which will impose itself upon the thoughts of our modern societies 
more and more. 

But while I admire the faith of Renan and Arnold and Goethe in 
what they all three believed to be the future of humanity, there is a 
long road yet to be traveled before what they hoped for can be fully 
accomplished. Grotius concludes bis great book on War and Peace 
with a noble prayer : 

May God write — 

He said — 
these lessons — He who alone can — on the hearts of all those who have the affairs of 
Christendom in their hands. And may He give to those persons a mind fitted to un- 

i Preface to the poems of Wordsworth. 



HIGHEK NATIONALITY. 17 

derstand and to respect rights, human and divine, and lead them to recollect always 
that the ministration committed to them is no less than this, that they are the govern- 
ors of man, a creature most dear to God. 

The prayer of Grotius has not yet been fulfilled, nor do recent 
events point to the fulfillment as being near. The world is probably 
a long way off from the abolition of armaments and the peril of war. 
For habits of mind which can be sufficiently strong with a single 
people can hardly be as strong between nations. There does not 
exist the same extent of common interest, of common purpose, and of 
common tradition. And yet the tendency, even as between nations 
that stand in no special relation to each other, to develop such a habit 
of mind is in our time becoming recognizable. There are signs that 
the best people in the best nations are ceasing to wish to live in a 
world of mere claims, and to proclaim on every occasion " Our 
country, right or wrong. 7 ; There is growing up a disposition to 
believe that it is good, not only for all men but for all nations, to con- 
sider their neighbor's point of view as well as their own. There is 
apparent at least a tendency to seek for a higher standard of ideals in 
international relations. The barbarism which once looked to con-* 
quest and the waging of successful war as the main object of states- 
manship seems as though it were passing away. There have been 
established rules of international law which" already govern the con- 
duct of war itself, and are generally observed as binding by all civil- 
ized people, with the result that the cruelties of war have been less- 
ened. If practice falls short of theory, at least there is to-day little 
effective challenge of the broad principle that a nation has as regards 
its neighbor's duties as well as rights. It is this spirit that may 
develop as time goes on into a full international "sittlichkeit." But 
such development is certainly still easier and more hopeful in the 
case of nations with some special relation than it is within a mere 
aggregate of nations. At times a common interest among nations 
with special relations of the kind I am thinking of gives birth to a 
social habit of thought and action which in the end crystallizes into a 
treaty; a treaty which in its turn stimulates the process that gave it 
birth. We see this in the case of Germany and Austria, and in that 
of France and Russia. Sometimes a friendly relationship grows up 
without crystallizing into a general treaty. Such has been the case 
between my own country and France. We have no convention 
excepting one confined to the settlement of old controversies over 
specific subjects; a convention which has nothing to do with war. 
None the less, since in that convention there was embodied the testi- 
mony of willingness to give as well as to take and to be mutually 
understanding and helpful, there has arisen between France and 
England a new kind of feeling which forms a real tie. It is still 
young and it may stand still or diminish. But equally well it may 
advance and grow, and it is earnestly to be hoped that it will do so. 

Recent events in Europe and the way in which the great powers 
have worked together to preserve the peace of Europe, as if forming 
one community, point to the ethical possibilities of the group system 
as deserving of close study by both statesmen and students. The 
il sittlichkeit " which can develop itself between the peoples of even a 
loosely connected group seems to promise a sanction for international 
obligation which has not hitherto, so far as I know, attracted atten^ 

S. Doc. 371, 63-2 2 



18 HIGHER NATIONALITY. 

tion in connection with international law. But if the group system 
deserves attention in the cases referred to, how much more does it 
call for attention in another and far more striking case! 

In the year which is approaching a century will have passed since 
the United States and the people of Canada and Great Britain ter- 
minated a great war by the peace of Ghent. On both sides the com- 
batants felt that war to be unnatural and one that should never have 
commenced. And now we have lived for nearly a hundred years, not 
only in peace, but also, I think, in process of coming to a deepening 
and yet more complete understanding of each other, and to the pos- 
session of common ends and ideals; ends and ideals which are natural 
to the Anglo-Saxon group and to that group alone. It seems to me 
that within our community there is growing an ethical feeling which 
has something approaching to the binding quality of which I have 
been speaking. Men may violate the obligations which that feeling 
suggests, but by a vast number of our respective citizens it would not 
be accounted decent to do so. For the nations in such a group as 
ours to violate these obligations would be as if respectable neighbors 
should fall to blows because of a difference of opinion. We may dis- 
agree on specific points and we probably shall, but the differences 
should be settled in the spirit and in the manner in which citizens 
usually settle their differences. The new attitude which is growing 
up has changed man}' things, and made much that once happened no 
longer likely to recur. I am concerned when I come across things 
that were written about America by British novelists only 50 years 
ago, and I doubt not that there are some things in the American 
literature of days gone past which many here would wish to have been 
without. But now that sort of writing is happily over, and we are 
realizing more and more the significance of our joint tradition and of 
the common interests which are ours. It is a splendid example to the 
world that Canada and the United States should have nearly 4,000 
miles of frontier practically unfortified. As an ex-war minister, who 
knows what a saving in unproductive expenditure this means, I fer- 
vently hope that it may never be otherwise. 

But it is not merely in external results that the pursuit of a grow- 
ing common ideal shows itself when such an ideal is really in men's 
minds. It transforms the spirit in which we regard each other, and 
it gives us faith in each other: 

Why, what but faith, do we abhor 

And idolize each ether for— 

Faith in our evil or our good, 

Which is or is not understood 

Aright by those we love or those 

We hate," thence called our friends or foes. 

I think that for the future of the relations between the United 
States on the one hand, and Canada and Great Britain on the other, 
those who are assembled in this great. meeting have their own special 
responsibility. We who are the lawyers of the New World and of 
the old mother country possess, as 1 have said to you, a tradition 
which is distinctive ana peculiarly our own. We have been taught 
to look on our system of justice not as something that waits to be 
embodied in abstract codes before it can be said to exist, but as what 
we ourselves are progressively and cooperatively evolving. And our 
power of influence is not confined to the securing of municipal justice. 
We play a large part in public affairs, and we influence our fellow 



HIGHER NATIONALITY. 19 

men in questions which go far beyond the province of the law, and 
ttdiich extend in the relations of society to that " sittlichkeit ' ' of 
which I have spoken. In this region we exert much control. If, 
then, there is to grow up among the nations of our group, and between 
that group and the rest of civilization, a yet further development of 
"sittlichkeit," has not our profession special opportunities ot influenc- 
ing opinion which are coupled with a deep responsibility ? To me, 
when I look to the history of our calling in the three countries, it 
seems that the answer to this question requires no argument and 
admits of no controversy. It is our very habit of regarding the law 
and the wider rules of conduct which lie beyond the law as something 
to be molded afresh as society develops, and to be molded best if 
we cooperate steadily, that gives us an influence perhaps greater than 
is strictly ours, an influence which may in affairs of the state be 
potently exercised for good or for evil. 

This, then, is why, as a lawyer speaking to lawj^ers, I have a strong 
sense of responsibility in being present here to-day, and why I believe 
that many of you share my feeling. A movement is in progress 
which we, by the character of our calling as judges and as advocates, 
have special opportunities to further. The sphere of our action has 
its limits, but at least it is given to us as a body to be the counsellors 
of our fellow citizens in public and in private life alike. I have before 
my mind the words which I have already quoted of the present 
President of the United States, when he spoke of "lawyers who can 
think in the terms of society itself. " And I believe that if, in the 
language of yet another President, in the famous words of Lincoln, 
we as a body in our minds and hearts " highly resolve" to work for 
the general recognition by society of the binding character of inter- 
national duties and rights as they arise within the Anglo-Saxon group, 
we shall not resolve in vain. A mere common desire may seem an 
intangible instrument, and yet, intangible as it is, it may be enough 
to form the beginning of what in the end can make the whole differ- 
ence. Ideas have hands and feet, and the ideas of a congress such 
as this may affect public opinion deeply. It is easy to fail to realize 
how much an occasion like the assemblage in Montreal of the Amer- 
ican Bar Association, on the eve of a great international centenary, 
can be made to mean, and it is easy to «et such an occasion pass with 
a too timid modesty. Should we let it pass now I think a real oppor- 
tunity for doing good will just thereby have been missed by you and 
me. We need say nothing; we need pass no cut-and-dried resolution. 
It is the sphit and not the letter that is the one thing needful. 

I do not apologize for having trespassed on the time and atten- 
tion of this remarkable meeting for so long or for urging what may 
seem to belong more to ethics than to law. We are bound to search 
after fresh principles if we desire to find firm foundations for a pro- 
gressive practical life. It is the absence of a clear conception of 
principle that occasions some at least of the obscurities and perplexi- 
ties that beset us in the giving of counsel and in following it. On the 
other hand, it is futile to delay action until reflection has cleared 
up all our difficulties. If we would learn to swim we must first enter 
the water. We must not refuse to be^in our journey until the whole 
of the road we may have to travel lies mapped out before us. A 
great thinker declared that it is not philosophy which first gives us 
the truth that lies to hand around us. and thai mankind has not to 



20 HIGHER NATIONALITY. 

wait for philosophy in order to be conscious of this truth. Plain 
John Locke put the same thing in more homely words when he said 
that "God has not been so sparing to men to make them two-legged 
creatures, and left it to Aristotle to make them national." Yet the 
reflective spirit does help, not by furnishing us with dogmas or final 
conclusions, or even with lines of action that are always definite, 
but by the insight which it gives; an insight that develops in us what 
Plato called the "synoptic mind"; the mind that enables us to see 
things steadily as well as to see them whole. 

And now I have expressed what I had in my mind. Your welcome 
to me has been indeed a generous one and I shall carry the memory 
of it back over the Atlantic. But the occasion has seemed to 
me significant of something beyond even its splendid hospitality. 
I have interpreted it, and I think not wrongly, as the symbol of a 
desire that extends beyond the limits of this assemblage. I mean 
the desire that we should steadily direct our thoughts to how we can 
draw into closest harmony the nations of a race in which all of us 
have a common pride. If that be now a far-spread inclination, then 
indeed may the people of three great countries say to Jerusalem 
"Thou shalt be built." and to the temple, "Thy foundation shall be 
laid." * aj 

1 

Hamptox L. Carson, of Pennsylvania. I rise to present, in behalf 
of the American Bar Association, resolution of appreciation and 
acknowledgment of the address just delivered by the Lord High 
Chancellor of Great Britain.. 

The dignity and authority of the Wool-sack and the glories of 
Westminster Hall are as dear to us as to the benchers of Lincoln's 
and Gray's Inns and the Inner and Middle Temple. The fame and 
the labors of Nottingham, Hardwicke, and Eldon are as much a part 
of our professional renown and professional treasures as those of 
Marshall, Story, and Kent. Inspired by the same traditions, enjoying 
the same heritage, administering the same principles, and drawing 
our knowledge from the same sources, we claim the common law as 
our birthright and are partakers of the destiny of the Anglo-Saxon 
to rule an ever-expanding empire of civilization and humanity by 
the light of a liberal jurisprudence. We recognize the same fealty 
to duty, we are conscious of the same holy mission, we are upheld 
by the same pride of achievement, we kneel at the same altar, and 
chant the same anthems of liberty. We place beside Magna Charta 
and the Bill of Rights the Constitution of the United States, and claim 
our share in building up the bulwarks of popular government. 

We regard as significant this meeting upon historic soil of the 
representatives of four nations, and we respond sympathetically 
to the exalted sentiments which have been uttered. "Higher na- 
tionality based upon law and ethics" is a noble theme, calculated 
to broaden and uplift the vision of all of us, and to open up vistas 
of the most beneficent international relationships. We applaud the 
spirit of the address, that while each nation shall act like a gentle- 
man, all councils of the world should be controlled by the gentle- 
manlike nations. In this way we can strike a newer, truer, deeper 
note of human brotherhood, which, like Memnon's own statue, burst- 
ing into music with every rising sun, will proclaim a new era of peace, 
good will, and of justice scrupulously exact. 



HIGHER NATIONALITY. 21 

I have the honor to present the following resolutions: 

Resolved, That the American Bar Association, appreciating the gracious spirit of 
the message of the King; joins most cordially in the hope that this occasion will serve 
not only to illustrate the esteem and good will of the United States, of Canada, of the 
United Kingdom, and of France for each other, but to strengthen the ties which bind 
us to a common duty in advancing the best interests of mankind. 

Resolved, That the special thanks of the American Bar Association be tendered to 
the Rt. Hon. Richard Burdon Haldane, Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain, for 
his philosophic and inspiring address: and that we recognize with appreciation the 
distinguished service he has rendered in promoting an international comity of pro- 
fessional good-fellowship. 

(The resolutions were generally seconded and adopted by a rising 
vote.) 

Lucien Hugh Alexander, of Pennsylvania. On behalf of the 
membership committee, it is my privilege to announce that the exec- 
utive committee, acting under and by virtue of the authority conferred 
upon it by the constitution and by-laws, has elected as an honorary 
member of the American Bar Association the Rt. Hon. Viscount 
Haldane of Cloan, Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain. 

We have, my Lord Chancellor — your nation and ours- — a joint 
birthright, a common heritage of blood, law, traditions, history, 
extending back through time immemorial. May we have, sir, a 
common future, as I believe we shall, as I believe we must, through 
the triumphs, the struggles, and stresses of the oncoming centuries. 
And so, it is with very real pleasure that, on behalf of my brethren of 
the American bar, I express to you our hope that you will accept — 
will honor us by accepting— the honor which it is our desire to confer. 

The Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain. I have this after- 
noon made you a very long speech and I promise not to say more than 
a few words now. 

First of all, let me say that I accept with the greatest pleasure the 
offer which has just been announced, and I shall be proud to reckon 
myself in the future a member of the American Bar Association. I 
think it is appropriate that it should be so; and this intimation, 
coming unexpectedly to me, makes me feel that there is a response 
coming at once to the appeal I have been making to all my fellow 
lawyers to consider ourselves as one body. 

And let me thank the mover of the resolution for the eloquent words 
which he spoke, and express my own sincere hope that the gospel I 
came here to preach — this gospel which has something new in it as 
regards the sanctions of international law, something new based in 
the experience of recent events in Europe — may lead to a further 
development of the general conscience, which will bring about the 
result we all desire. 

And now I thank you for this splendid welcome, and as I go back 
over the Atlantic I shall carry with me the memory of this great 
meeting as long as I live. 

o 



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